Project Open Kimono 7 – Can analytics find the world’s best B2B marketers?

Written by Neil Stoneman | Posted on Wednesday, October 27th, 2010 at 2:06 pm.

If you’ve been following Project Open Kimono then you might already know that we’re on the lookout for ambitious B2B marketing folk, and hoping to land a few of them as clients.

We believe the people who find and download the B2B Marketing Manifesto are our kind of people. It’s not just a plea for ambition. It’s a 46 page psychographic test.

So where should we be looking? Where are the B2B marketers who are prepared to sit eyeball-to-eyeball with their sales directors and give them hell?

We’re going to use analytics to find our idea of the world’s B2B marketing hotbed.

As our traffic is roughly split between Europe and the Americas it feels like the right place to start. Let the B2B Marketing Ryder Cup begin.

Europe has delivered the most site visits since we launched the B2B Manifesto. So Europe wins, right?

In many businesses the answer would be yes. Sites are often orientated to this basic demographic. If you’ve ever heard the immortal line: “the bulk of our traffic comes from…”, then you’ll know what I’m talking about.

But this isn’t just a numbers game, it’s a psychographic test. We need to know more.

Pack away the champagne and unload the Zinfandel! You’re twice as likely to respond to the message and download the Manifesto if you hail from the New World.

But it’s still not enough. The figures need still more focus. The graphic above includes everybody – the hawkers, the spammers, the spiders – that come to our site. They’re not marketers. Why would they ever download our book?

Can extra precision offer Europe a way back?

Because we’ve tagged our campaign links we can accurately measure the response of our target audience: the B2B marketing community.

We’re really interested in their visits and downloads and, although the gap tightens a little, the conversion rate stays higher in the Americas

Game, set and match. So it’s time to say au revoir to Europe in our search for world’s B2B marketing hotbed.

It’s been 17 years since a Canadian team won ice hockey’s Stanley Cup and there’s no respite in our B2B marketing version.

The United States scores a comprehensive victory on every metric including the one that really counts – campaign goal conversions. The quest is nearly over but we want it down to a single dot on a map.

It’s tight, but it always is at the top. If you’re looking for enlightened, ambitious and progressive B2B marketers then look no further than Chicago. The city synonymous with Al Capone, the Sears Building and the Bears can now add progressive, ambitious B2B marketing to its Hall of Fame.

If you’re a B2B marketer based in Chicago then we’d love to hear from you: you’re our kind of B2B marketer.
B2B Marketing Analytics Conclusions
You can argue that downloading the B2B Marketing Manifesto is no guarantee of professional excellence. You might be right.

But the key point here is an illustration of what you can learn if you set up and manage your campaign data properly.

Good marketing relies on effective demographic or psychographic segmentation. You make (and save) money when you tailor your campaigns, messages and offers to the right groups.

We’ve cut the odds in our favour. Our analytics have taken us from Europe (population 731,000,000), to Chicago (population 2,800,000) in our bid to find the right kind of client and reduced our wastage by 99.7 per cent.

2 Responses to “Project Open Kimono 7 – Can analytics find the world’s best B2B marketers?”

Chicago is the home to the Business Marketing Association (BMA), the largest trade group for B2B marketing professionals in the U.S. BMA also has a very active local Chicago chapter, which is also supported by some of its major B2B agencies, like Slack Barshinger.

The Construction Marketing Association is a start-up also based in Chicago, which is very active online.

The Business Marketing Institute (our outfit, also based in Chicago), serves both organizations and we have been big fans of Velocity’s content and eBooks. Keep up the great work!